


Assigned Target: Sherlock Holmes

by stravaganza



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, M/M, Mature for violence, No porn for now, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Well. Crime scenes. Creating them isn't the same as being invited on them by the police, is it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assigned Target: Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [manic-merc-mannerisms](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=manic-merc-mannerisms).



> For talented-talismanic-trickster in the johnlockchallenges Gift Exchange! Their prompt was for angst and futuristic assassins AU. I did my best (which isn't much), but I still hope you like it!
> 
> Please, consider buying me a coffee on [my ko-fi page](http://ko-fi.com/stravaganza)! I'd really appreciate your support!

Jogging is a good thing, I found out in the course of the last two and a half years. It reminds me a bit of the times spent chasing criminals across London with Sherlock. The same burn in my lungs, the same straining in my muscles, the swelling in my heart and the thrill of the hunt. I never limp during my jogs. When I can, I avoid thinking about Sherlock at all, preferring to focus on the task at hand.

Despite the radical change in my life, it doesn’t seem to have changed at all since what I call “the fall”. I still get up early out of military habit, linger in bed for no longer than five minutes and then I get up to make it again, as precisely as ever, before going to the loo for bladder emptying, teeth brushing and a quick shower. I still make tea for two, but now I drink an extra cup. I got a new job. Simply, I shifted back to the quiet, senseless, boring routine I had instituted in the first two months back in London from Afghanistan, way before I met Sherlock Holmes. I no longer receive texts at unholy hours of the night though, and I don’t have to bail anyone out of jail or clean up rests of bloody experiments. Since then, I have seen very little crime scenes.

Well- better take this turn, I don’t want to be spotted by a security camera. I learnt how to avoid a certain person’s traitorous brother’s eyes. I never thought I could hate someone more than I hate James Moriarty, but apparently I was wrong.

What was I saying? Oh, right! Well. Crime scenes. Creating them isn’t the same as being invited on them by the police, is it? Like now. I’m following a man. My target. It’s something I would have ended up doing in any case, really. I stop in the middle of the alley I’m running in, breathing heavily. I take out my gun and aim to the middle of the man’s back, my hands not shaking at all as I fire. I always feel a sick pleasure in seeing them stumble on his own feet and fall to the ground, and even more so as I approach them and finish my job with a bullet in the brain and one in the heart, as usual. I would call it my signature, but everyone does it. Every assassin. But it doesn’t mean the same to them. Brain and heart.

Don’t take me wrong. I still need my adrenaline fix. And after all, I only ever kill people who deserve it. People Sherlock and I would have ended up chasing anyway – murderers escaped from the police’s eye, arsonists, even a paedophile. Sometimes I like to imagine how things would have gone with Sherlock on the case.

This one, for example. A drug dealer that used children to smuggle cocaine from South America to England. Sherlock would have studied the cartel’s movements, understood who was the head of it in London, and wouldn’t have lost time to hand his name to the police, rather deciding to pay him a visit. The man would have climbed out of the window, as he did when he saw my gun earlier, and they would have jumped out right after him. I predicted his steps like Sherlock would have, and I’m proud to say that I’m almost as good as he was. I have learned something, after all. Then together we would have ran in the dark alleys, Sherlock always faster with his bloody legs, and would have taken a shortcut to surprise the man, who in turn would have taken him by the throat and threatened him with a pocket knife. That’s why I would have shot and killed him anyway.

Of course, it’s a whole lot less fun when you receive the name and address of the culprit of these unearthly crimes in the mail with the bills. There’s no brain work, but again, that had never been my area. I have always been the hand.

Quietly, as if nothing happened, I put my gun and silencer back in the small rucksack I always bring with me, containing food, water, and a towel, other than a waterproof jacket, spare gloves and everything anyone would need during a jog in London’s changeful weather.

Life is quite good. I now get enough money to afford living in Baker Street alone. It has been hard to get used to the silence, but I still can’t imagine myself living anywhere else. I need to be close to Mrs Hudson, and I don’t want all of Sherlock’s stuff to be sold like she had suggested. I still have most of it, very unnecessarily I’ll admit.

Sometimes I wonder what Sherlock would think of my new job, but then I remind myself that he is gone and will never be back to judge him. He would probably snort for his idiotic choice of life. Would he be thrilled by the idea of chasing such a good killer as me? Not that I’m that good. Probably I’m not at all. I get too close to the victims. It’s just because the Yard is full of incompetents that I haven’t been caught yet. Sherlock would see through it in seconds. Through me.

My mobile chimes and I slow down, back on the main road, to check it. The reply to my previously sent text, the “work’s been done”: a gym’s address and the number of a locker is all it reads, and I memorise it before dumping the phone all together. The usual place. That would have been very dangerous with Sherlock investigating. Too many things that fell into a predictable routine. But he isn’t here to investigate, and let’s be honest, had he been I wouldn’t have needed to get this job.

It’s more of a hobby, really, since I still help Sarah at the clinic more often than not. I like saving lives, too, and I have to justify my income of money, after all, despite it not flowing to my bank account. I’m not that daft. I keep all in my bedroom, under a moving floorboard. None of it is detectable. Unless the police or Mycroft check on people’s purchase of duct tape, considered how I just picked up a bag full of notes cut in half. The other half is already home, the incentive to do my job quickly and well. I sigh at the thought of spending another night putting halves of money back together.

I turn around to exit the locker room, the bag secured on my shoulder, just to run into a man  I know very well. He’s the one who got me into this business, an old army mate that had been dispatched to the other side of Afghanistan with another division. We met at a bar’s counter out of chance, and asked each other how life was. He had been just back from the service at the time, and he didn’t know anything about Sherlock Holmes and his loyal sidekick, about James Moriarty and Richard Brook, and the fall. I told him nothing. If he eventually found out, he hasn’t mentioned it.

“Sebastian,” I say with a smile, looking at his dark eyes and doing my best to ignore the long scars that cross his face. He shakes my hand, and claps my shoulder.

“Good job, Watson, really. It’s a pity people like you never last too much,” he says with a grin. I roll my eyes, because of course he would say that. He is a sniper, he doesn’t even need to breathe his victims’ same air to kill them.

“I know my way around town quite well, and I have learned a few things during my life. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” I assure him with a small laugh.

Moran passes a hand in his dirty blond hair and nods, his grin turning even sharper. “That’s not what I meant at all. Just that, you know, people don’t usually like to go on with this for too long.” With that, he opens three different lockers and pulls out three different bags, putting them all on one shoulder before heading out. I follow.

“I’ve heard the boss has a good job for you, but that it might be your last,” Sebastian says as soon as we are outside the gym, a moment before we would need to part ways. He never seemed one who likes to spend time with people.

“Really? And who said that?” I inquire, raising an eyebrow. I can’t help but look sceptic, and this is greeted by white teeth being revealed by thin lips, Sebastian’s hand disappearing in his pocket for a moment. He takes out a small piece of white paper, handing it to me.

“I say it,” he simply states, and I frown in confusion before opening the note. I can feel the colour being drained from my face.

The paper simply reads, in an elegant cursive handwriting: _Assigned Target: Sherlock Holmes._

“No,” I breathe, and it catches in my throat. I look up just to find Moran already gone. “No…”

I shove the piece of paper in my pocket as far as it will go, as if it could disappear that way.

So, Sebastian _has_ found out about my recent past, or he wouldn’t have said that. Maybe it’s just a joke? Sherlock Holmes is already dead, dead as he could be, as dead as any of my bullet would make him. Unless it wouldn’t, because I could never bring myself to kill my best friend. Could have never. I don’t need to, it’s just a mistake since a case of homonymy is nearly impossible. Unless the paper was supposed to read “Mycroft”. That was a Holmes I would be more than happy to kill.

I shake my head to try and clear it. Sebastian is right, I’m not willing to continue working for someone with such a grim sense of humour. I really need a cup of tea, now. Tea is the cure to every illness, as my mum used to say. It’s kind of true, though it can’t cure heartache. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in love with Sherlock. I’ve never been. But we are – were – best friends, and just… We didn’t frequent the same bed, contrary to popular belief, never have, and I don’t swim that way. Except maybe I do – did – a bit, for Sherlock. Perhaps I really loved – love – him.

But it’s too late now, and whatever the fuck what we shared was, it’s gone.

I have been too preoccupied with my own thoughts to notice I have limped all the way back home, only the seventeen steps to my flat pointing that out, but as I turn the light on I seem to feel everything ten times stronger than it is. And I can’t help but damn my leg as I approach the tall, dark figure lurking near the tall windows, the five steps I would normally take to cross the room seeming too short now. I can’t be there soon enough.

I all but throw the bag with the money and the backpack to the floor and run up to Sherlock, because it must be him, it can’t be anyone else!, but how?, I wonder as I grab the lapels of his coat and pull him down like I had done that last night, metallic bars between us. There is no obstacle now, I could pull Sherlock as close as I want him to be to feel real and alive, as much as I need him to be to study his features.

The same blue eyes that had looked at me in that last moment, frozen in place, the same dark curls I had seen soaked in blood, the same head I had seen crashing and breaking on a pavement, the same body I had seen fly – but how, how, _how_ can he now be blinking at me, his hair so perfect, his head still intact, his breath warm on my skin? I reach for his wrist, and count the heartbeats – how can he be so calm, _how can he be alive at all_?

I take several steps back and stumble on my armchair, falling backwards and, either from the tumble or the shock, if the breathless cry of his name I manage to spit out is any indication of it, fainting. I wake up in less than a minute, I know I do because it’s not my first time losing consciousness – first time seeing a corpse, back in medical school; not one of my proudest moments – and I don’t seem to take too long to regain it.

When I open my eyes I find Sherlock looming over me, his breath once more on my skin as he holds my head. I’m sure I haven’t hit it hard enough to die, or start hallucinating, and Sherlock’s hands feel too real to be just a dream. _Please don’t be just a dream_.

“John,” he rumbles in that deep voice of his, and I can’t help but melt and tear up, wanting to hug and punch him at the same time. I opt for the latter as a tear rolls down my cheek, and I practically growl in pain as my knuckles collide against his cheekbone like they had years ago. God, why his face has to be so hard?

“You twat!” is the first thing I manage to tell him, and he seems taken aback by my punch if the dumbstruck expression on his face means anything. He still holds me though, even as I sit up, which I suppose only makes easier for me pulling him close for a kiss. It’s quick, but when I pull back I notice it was quite a shock. And I can’t help but smile.

“I wanted to do that for a while,” I murmur, and Sherlock scans me with his eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” he whispered back.

“Do you expect a second kiss?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “Good, I like surprising you,” I say, just so I can kiss him again. When I pull back, he seems to be frowning a little.

“Surprising is good,” he agrees with a small movement of his head. “I’m expecting a third kiss, though.”

I pull his face close one more time, but do not kiss him. “Pity that’s not going to happen,” I manage to say before pulling back to see his face. He isn’t changed one bit. “How… can you be alive, just. How could you survive?”

Sherlock purses his lips and looks away for a moment, before answering. “I didn’t.”

“But you’re here, how can you be here?”

“I am, yes,” he agrees again. “But I didn’t survive the fall, you felt it. No pulse.”

“You’re alive now, though.”

“Yes, I am.”

I can’t understand what he’s trying to tell me. I’m not sure whether I’ve gone mad or he is simply talking nonsense. “Sherlock, what… What…?”

“Why are you crying?” he asks, and I let go of him to touch my face. There are indeed a couple of tears on my cheeks, and I rub them away. “I could never understand crying,” he murmurs, frowning again. I laugh and shake my head.

“But you were crying. That day, on the roof,” I say. I could never forget that. Even if it was just a trick.

“Was I? I suppose I was.” He pauses and looks at the carpet for a moment before standing again, pulling me up with him. “Look, I have no time to explain. I’m back because you’re in danger.”

I stare at him, and I can tell my face is incredulous even without looking at it. Sherlock rolls his eyes as if to confirm that.

“You have to trust me. I’ve spent most of this time trying to bring down what used to be Moriarty’s network, but it wasn’t easy. I had to do it alone, couldn’t risk your life, and I’m still missing some of his connections,” Sherlock blurts out as he starts to pace the room, and for a moment it seems as if time hasn’t passed at all. Except it has.

“Three years. You risked your life for three years, you were… Dead, to the world. For three years.” That’s all I manage to say on the moment. Sherlock stopped and looked at me, sighing.

“It was for your safety. I was in danger, too, but-,” he falls silent and checks his mobile as it chimes. “But, I don’t have time. Not now. There are people trying to kill me. An organization of assassins.”

I feel my blood freeze in my veins. “Assassins?”

“Yes. I know who leads them – Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s best man. Very professional people, I have to admit, took me months to find them,” he says with a smug grin.

Oh God. Does he already know? No, he wouldn’t be wasting time, he wouldn’t spare me. Would he?

“Now. I’m suddenly back to the living and they found out. I hid as long as I could but now- Now I need your assistance to bring them down.”

I nod. Yes, yes I can do it. I could tell him everything right now, except I can’t. Because what would his reaction be, then? No, it doesn’t matter. He would find out anyway, and that’d be worse.

“Sherlock, actually I think… I think I know how to find them,” I say as calmly as I can.

Sherlock turns around to face the window. “I know,” he says.

God.

As I open my mouth to say something more, Sherlock turns around again and the words get stuck in my throat. No, I know that face. It’s his deadly serious face, and it never lead to anything good before.

“There is a sniper on the building opposite to this. Our friend Colonel Moran, I presume,” he says calmly. I swallow.

“You have to hide. If we duck quickly enough he won’t-…” Oh. Of course. _Oh_. Stupid, stupid me. “He’s waiting for me to do it.”

Sherlock smiles like he always does when I get something right. “Indeed. I suppose it’s a I’ll-do-it-if-you-don’t kind of thing.”

I swallow and nod, hands clenched in tight fists at my sides. “Right.”

“I’d rather it be you, though.” God, no.

“I can’t.”

“Come on, I’ve been dead for years! I’ll be dead again. No problem, is there?” He takes a few steps towards me, pulling the rucksack from my back and rummaging in it to get hold of my gun. What the hell is going through that mad, impossible brain? Surely he doesn’t mean…?

He presses the gun in my hands and smiles tightly again. “I think you should do it,” he says, pointing it against his chest. All I can do is shake my head as he throws the backpack away and puts his hands on my shoulders.

“You have to trust me with this,” he murmurs. “Run as soon as you’re done.”

I look into his eyes and feel the blood drain from my face even more, those eyes that were so dead but are now so alive, that I have to make dead again. No, no way. But he survived that fall, his head was nearly split open and he is here now. Maybe he could survive this, too. I do trust him.

“Do it, John. Shoot me.”

 _Yes_ , I think. _You have a gun, a hand and a finger, and it is already on a trigger you pulled a hundred times, John. What’s so different this time?_ I close my eyes and aim, pressing the barrel against his eye socket; if he is to die again, I don’t want him to look at me. I don’t want to dream it anymore.

“It’s alright. I promise,” he murmurs, squeezing my shoulders.

“I love you,” I whisper, seconds before the sound of the gun firing reverberates in the room.

I shot. I really did that.

 

I feel Sherlock’s hands losing their grip as his body falls, and I turn around immediately, rushing to the bathroom. No, not again, I’m not going to look, to check his vital signs. I could throw up as it is already, I don’t need that, too. What have I done?

Minutes passes before I manage to uncurl myself from the bathroom’s floor. I pull myself up, siting with my back against the door at the sound of my phone ringing. I pick it up with shaky fingers and take the call, but say nothing: I recognised the number.

“Good job, Watson.” Moran. “Told you it’d be your last hit. Pity your bathroom doesn’t have windows, I’d like to see your face now. He shielded you before dying, how chivalrous.”

If only I could kill him through the phone. But I swear I will find him.

“Not that I was going to kill you,” he laughs. I clench my jaw. “No, it’s not fair that Jim’s actually dead and your Sherlock wasn’t, is it? _Now_ we’re equals. We’ve lost all that mattered to us. Why should I kill you when I can ask you how does it feel?”

I close my eyes and throw the phone away, watching it crash against the opposite wall. I don’t dare leave the room. God, I’m probably going to die here. I don’t want to live anymore, not after what I just did. I could just shoot myself, I took the gun with me, it wouldn’t take too long… A knock startles me. Not the front door, the bathroom door. Maybe Mrs Hudson heard and called the police? But what are they going to arrest me for? Murder of a man deceased nearly three years ago? The door isn’t locked anyway. They will just come in as soon as they realise that.

“John.”

I shiver. _What?_

“John.” The knocking repeats itself, and I shake my head. _Impossible_.

An annoyed huff of breath and then the door is being opened from outside, and I can only shift forward not to fall back. I turn around to look, and there Sherlock is, with a bloody hole in his head and a missing eye. Now I could really throw up, but somehow I don’t. Somehow the only thing I manage to do after three years is crying, and choke on my sobs. How is that possible? It isn’t! I must have gone mad, or perhaps I’m still dreaming, or hit my head really bad when I fainted…

Sherlock looks at the mirror and rolls his eye, as if in realisation of something really boring. He reaches the sink and starts the water, rinsing his wound from the blood, who has already stopped flowing. I can’t look at him, but I can’t look away from him. Which is good, because when he cleans his face and turns around, I can clearly see the impossible.

The skin beside his eye is broken, ripped by the bullet, and it reveals the shining metal underneath it. _What?_

I’m frozen in place as Sherlock approaches me and picks up my hand, bringing it to his cheek to let me caress it. I trace the soft skin over his cheekbone reverently, before letting my finger wander up to his missing eye. What does it mean?

“Yes,” Sherlock murmurs, as if reading my mind. I shake my head and laugh bitterly.

“You can’t be a robot, Sherlock, you… You’re not…”

“A machine?”

I shake my head. “Why do you sound amused?”

“Because you finally realised that everybody was right when they called me that,” he smirks. “When they called me cold, dethatched, a freak, a sociopath.”

“But you’re not!” I feel like screaming it to him. He wasn’t. Though… “You could have told me, I mourned you for three years! And now, this, just now! Why did you make me do that?” I ask, because honestly. First I have to watch him jump, then I have to shot him… What’s next?

“It was for your safety, John. And because I need them to think I’m really dead. When you have a vast network of expert assassins looking for you, that’s the only thing you can do.” I shake my head again and he sighs, grabbing my shoulders again. I try to steel my expression. “John, Moran will tell everyone I’m dead, and they all will stop coming after me. I need you to be there when we arrest him. As a part of the organisation, I need you to take it over and then help me take it down.” His tone is nearly solemn as he finishes with a bit too theatrical: “I need you with me.”

I shove him away and shake my head. “Why? You could do this all alone, can’t you? All that time spent protecting you, risking my life for you, _loving_ you, and you’re not even-!”

“Human?” he ends the sentence for me. Silence falls, and I look away, unable to sustain his gaze. “I might not be, but I did need you. I still do.”

I clench my jaw and shake my head again. “I told you that I love you. But you can’t reciprocate it, can you?”

There is a small pause, before he takes a deep breath. “John…”

I raise my hand to silence him. “It’s alright. I’ll help you.” I’m looking at the carpet on the tiled floor when a big, surprisingly warm hand grabs hold of mine.

“I can’t tell if I love you, I’m not sure I’m programmed for that, but I can ask Mycroft to fix that. I need a new eye, anyway.”

I’m not sure whether I want to laugh or punch him again. “Don’t tell me Mycroft built you!”

I can hear the smirk in his face, rather than see it. “He did,” he murmurs.

“Fine. Fine, I’ll help you. And- don’t worry about that. Love would only slow your… circuits down,” I say, letting go of his hand and rubbing my eyes again.

He pulls my face close and kisses me gently, and my hands fall back to my sides. “Maybe I won’t feel love, but I could love you anyway. You deserve it.”

I laugh. “Yes,” I smirk. “Yes, I think I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I might continue this. If I manage to write another chapter!


End file.
